For a company based in a country about which one of the prevailing stereotypes is collective uniformity of identity, Seiko is extremely diverse in what it creates – sometimes, and especially for newcomers to watches as a hobby, bewilderingly so. The watches made by Seiko run the gamut from simple, inexpensive quartz watches and the ever-popular Seiko 5, all the way up to what you see here: the Seiko Credor Eichi II, a hand-made, platinum wristwatch with a hand-decorated porcelain dial and a Spring Drive movement finished to within an inch of its life, made in extremely small numbers. This might just be the most interesting time-only watch on planet Earth.

The Seiko Credor Eichi II is a uniquely Japanese take on ultra-high touch fine watchmaking.

ADVERTISEMENT

Made in Seiko's Micro Artist Studio in Shiojiri, Japan, the Credor Eichi II is probably the most extreme expression in Seiko's output of the idea of a watch in which everything non-essential has been carefully pared away – not with the idea of minimalism for its own sake in mind, but rather with the goal of expressing what's most essential about the spirit not only of the watch, but also of the craftsmen who made it. The problem with minimalism is that if you're not careful – and a lot of designers aren't – what you end up with is something simplistic rather than simple; you get sterility. Sterile, the Credor Eichi II is not. Although, you'd be forgiven if you missed its charm at first or even fifth glance, because this is about as inside baseball as modern luxury watchmaking gets. Eichi II debuted in 2014, which was also the 40th anniversary of the Credor line, first launched in 1974.

The Credor Eichi II was, of course, preceded by the Eichi I, in 2008, which was a smaller, slightly fussier watch in a couple of respects. Eichi I (or just Eichi, as we knew it when it came out) is a 35mm watch, in a platinum case, with Seiko Spring Drive caliber 7R08. The dial is hand-made, hand-decorated Noritake porcelain, and it also sports the Credor logo, as well as a power reserve indication. It was made as a limited edition of 25 pieces and they are very rarely seen in the wild; it's obviously long since sold out.

The original Eichi was released in 2008, in a slightly smaller size than the Eichi II.

That porcelain dial has a little bit of a secret (or at least you have to be observant to catch it, or know it's there to begin with). This is the fact that the numbers two, four, and seven are painted in matte enamel on the glossy dial, and you can just barely make them out when the light hits the dial at the right angle.

While the Eichi has its power reserve on the dial, the Eichi II's power reserve is on the movement side.

"Eichi II was the result of everyone at the Micro Artist Studio coming together and thinking about how to make an even better watch."

– Seiko Micro Artist Studio Watchmaker Yoshifisu Nakazawa

By contrast, just about all the extra bells and whistles found in the original Eichi (to the extent that you can call them that) are gone in Eichi II; you have three hands, the word "Credor," and that's it. At the same time, though, it doesn't come across stark or empty or sterile; the subtle grain-like texture of the porcelain and the deep indigo iridescence of the hands make the Eichi II at least as endlessly fascinating to look at as was the original Eichi. Unlike the original Eichi, Eichi II is not a limited edition, but it is very limited production: about 20 pieces per year are made and demand outstrips production so that even given its cost and very niche appeal, would-be owners have to be prepared to wait – currently the wait in the USA is anywhere from nine months to a year, depending on when you order and the production calendar at the Micro Artist Studio.

Is Eichi II better than the original Eichi? That's a matter of personal taste, but in a recent interview, Micro Artist Studio watchmaker Yoshifisu Nakazawa remarked, "Eichi II was the result of everyone at the Micro Artist Studio coming together and thinking about how to make an even better watch."

Though a simple watch, the Eichi II is extremely sophisticated in design and execution.

If you're wondering whether porcelain and enamel are the same thing, the answer is, "sort of." Porcelain generally contains some clay and enamels don't; enamel starts out as a finely ground glass powder, which is "vitrified" (that is, transformed into an homogenous glass surface) by high temperature firing; another difference is that typically enamel is applied to a metal substrate before firing. Porcelain was originally developed in China around 2,000 years ago and was introduced to Japan in the early 17th century; about a century later, European manufacturing began (though at first, on a very small scale). The porcelain dials used on the Eichi watches are, as we've mentioned, hand-painted and the degree of fineness is pretty unbelievable; I can only imagine that for your hand to be steady enough to do this sort of work, you have to lead a fairly disciplined life.

The porcelain dial is painted by hand, and only one per day can be made.

The heat-blued hands and hand-painted dial are elegantly simple and more impressive the longer you look at them.

As you can see, it's only under pretty extreme magnification that you can see the minute irregularities that betray the hand-executed nature of the dial. The great thing about the irregularities is that they're not really irregularities; they're not mistakes per se, but rather the hallmark of something that came to be through an organic process. Likewise, the hands are extremely simple but also very, very fine, with beautiful tapering tips to the hour and minute hands and a slight radiusing of the very tip of the seconds hand which, since this is a Spring Drive watch, glides serenely across the dial in one smooth arc.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Spring Drive Movement

One very key distinguishing feature of the Eichi II is that it uses a Spring Drive movement. Seiko's Spring Drive technology is easy to misunderstand, which is partly due to the basic nature of Spring Drive. Spring Drive isn't a standard mechanical movement, but it isn't a standard quartz movement either; although it is regulated by a quartz timing package, there's no battery or capacitor.

Spring Drive is widely used by Seiko in its Grand Seiko watches as well. The Spring Drive caliber 9R65A is a typical example, and is directly descended from the first Spring Drive movements which resulted from the work of the late Yoshikazu Akahane, who began working on what was to eventually become (after working through some 600 models, proofs-of-concept, and prototypes) today's mature Spring Drive technology, which was first shown at Baselworld in 1998 before becoming commercially available in 1999.

This Spring Drive movement looks, at first glance, an awful lot like a conventional automatic mechanical movement, and that's because most of it actually is a conventional automatic mechanical movement. The winding rotor, mainspring, and the going train are all basically identical to what you would find in a standard, lever escapement, mechanical watch.

The automatic winding system and mainspring barrel are visible above the rotor; the small three lobed bridge at 11:00 is for the power reserve.

It's only when you get to where the escape wheel, lever, balance, and balance spring would be in an ordinary mechanical watch, that you start to notice significant differences. The gear train of a Spring Drive watch doesn't have an escape wheel. Instead, the last conventional gear in the gear train drives what in a Spring Drive movement is called the "glide wheel."

Where an ordinary mechanical watch has a balance wheel, the Spring Drive has a "glide wheel."

The glide wheel acts as a microrotor for a generator, and is also braked electromagnetically to control the movement of the hands.

As the glide wheel turns, it generates an extremely tiny electrical current. The current is used to power a quartz timing package and also to generate a magnetic field, which exerts a braking force on the glide wheel to control the speed at which it rotates; the strength of the magnetic field, and thus the rotational speed of the glide wheel, is controlled by the quartz oscillator so that the glide wheel turns exactly eight times per second.

The "tell" of a Spring Drive movement is the steady gliding motion of the seconds hand. In a conventional quartz watch, the seconds hand moves in (typically) one second jumps and of course, in a mechanical watch the seconds hand jumps forward every time the balance unlocks the escape wheel and allows the gear train to advance.

So is Spring Drive mechanical or quartz? It's really neither, as we said – the most common source of confusion I think, is that Seiko also makes its Kinetic movements, in which a winding rotor similar to that found in a mechanical automatic watch is used to generate electricity and charge a battery, rather than wind a mainspring that drives a glide wheel (that acts as a generator rotor and whose power output, regulated by a quartz timing package, feeds back into itself and acts as a magnetic brake). Spring Drive is distinctly different from mechanical, conventional quartz, and autoquartz/kinetic movements.

Spring Drive Credor Caliber 7R14

The Eichi II uses an unusual hand-wound Spring Drive movement (generally hand-wound Spring Drive calibers are reserved for higher-end Grand Seiko and Credor watches). To keep the dial as uncluttered as possible, the power reserve has been moved to the back of the movement (as opposed to the one on the front of the original Eichi).

The Spring Drive Caliber 7R14 is a rare example of a hand-wound Spring Drive movement.

The Caliber 7R14 has a simple, elegant two-bridge layout.

The caliber 7R14 follows on the movement used in the original Eichi – caliber 7R08A has a slightly more complex bridge configuration and unlike the Eichi II's caliber 7R14, which is made of rhodium-plated brass, the original Eichi caliber 7R08A is made of maillechort (German silver). One of the technical features of 7R14, which is not often mentioned (maybe because the aesthetics are so distracting) is that it has what Seiko calls a "torque return system" – a mechanism for harvesting unneeded excess torque produced when the mainspring is fully wound, and using it to rewind the mainspring, which contributes to the Eichi II's 60-hour power reserve.

Unlike the Caliber 7R14, the original Eichi caliber 7R08A is made of German silver (and has a slightly more elaborate layout).

The rhodium-plated caliber 7R14 has a brighter, slightly harder sheen than the untreated German silver of the 7R08A, and the level of finish is at an extremely high level, to put it mildly. Unlike the quality of the dial, which even an enthusiast might miss at first glance, the spectacular movement finish is immediately obvious and speaks for itself. The bevels flow from one edge to the next perfectly harmoniously, with only the most subtle flourishes to emphasize the distribution of the equally immaculate countersinks for the jewels.

ADVERTISEMENT

There are things you look at and think to yourself, "well, with the right amount of training, I just might be able to do that" (like a martial arts film hero whose family is wiped out by gangsters, and who spends the next 10 years training to put the bad guys in a world of hurt). It's a common enthusiast's daydream to wonder about becoming a master watchmaker, but the finish on some watches is a real reality check – so flawlessly handled that you feel pretty certain that no matter how hard you tried, and for how long, you could never hope to get anywhere near being able to produce something so good. The Eichi II is one of those watches.

One of the key features to notice is how the movement bridge beveling varies in its proximity to the countersinks – everything from relatively distant, to just barely touching at their exact edges, to actually flowing across a countersink proper.

Caliber 7R14 offers the same extremely high level of finish as the original Eichi movement.

The heat-blued screws, countersinks, and beveling are all done by hand to the highest standard.

Caliber 7R14 has slightly wider beveling than in the original caliber 7R08A, for slightly greater clarity of line.

I can think of very few watches that could tolerate this level of up-close scrutiny, and it's easy to believe, when you look at the general level of quality in an Eichi, that only 20 or so a year are made (the total annual output of the Micro Artist Studio is only about 25 watches overall, including the chiming Credor watches and the Eichi watches).

It's no surprise that the Eichi and Eichi II are often compared to Philippe Dufour's Simplicity; Dufour famously consulted with the Micro Artist Studio on finishing techniques, and the Studio's Yoshifisu Nakazawa has said that both watches were directly inspired by the Simplicity.

"The quality of a simple watch is known only to a few people."

– Yoshifusa Nakazawa, Micro Artist Studio Master Watchmaker

Master watchmaker Yoshifusa Nakazawa has been with Seiko since 1978, and with the Micro Artist Studio since 2005 (the Studio was established in 2000). Every watch produced there passes through his hands, and is also a collaboration among the entire staff of 11 artisans currently working at the Studio. I can't think of a better expression of the philosophy behind Eichi than his own words on what a simple watch really means.

"Although this kind of simple watch is still a luxury product, it’s not ostentatious. It’s not a watch that is bought as a fashion object, but because the buyer knows its quality. The purpose of some other exclusive watches, ones that contain jewels or lavish amounts of gold, is to be seen. The quality of a simple watch is known only to a few people. It is worn to satisfy yourself and your own preferences. That is a simple watch."

"Another aspect of a simple watch is that the value stays constant. The quality doesn’t change over time. It retains its value even over 100 years, so you can hand it down to your children and grandchildren. I think one of its best features is that it can be cherished over a long time."

The Credor Eichi II: Seiko's take on the ultimate "simple watch."

The Eichi II is, despite the fact that it was inspired very much by Dufour's work, a very characteristically Japanese object. The single-minded pursuit of craft to an extremely high level of skill, done not just out of respect for the craft itself, but out of a sense of obligation to one's peers and community, is not exclusive to Japan, of course. But it is taken to a higher level in collective culture in Japan, perhaps than it is anywhere else.

My own experience of this level of attention comes most directly from the practice of meditation, and mindfulness in the martial arts, where any anticipation of a result or a particular outcome ultimately detracts; goals provide orientation, but attachment to achieving a goal actually obstructs the development of skill. Much of the Eichi, and the craft it expresses, comes from a certain orientation to the gradual development of skill and the necessity for the development of sure intuition through mindful action. A critical aspect of this way of doing things is that it is best passed on through direct experience; Nakazawa says:

"Of course we teach the types of basics, standards, and work processes that can be written down, but there are many aspects of watchmaking where a craftsman, including myself, has to rely on his own feelings and sensibilities. It’s hard to put this into words, so it’s best that students experience it firsthand. They have to cultivate this kind of intuition."

Seiko says Eichi means "wisdom" which is a lot of weight for a watch to bear. But here it definitely seems apt. This ability of a physical object to embody the mindfulness of the craftsmen who made it is what, I think, makes watchmaking at a high level about more than ordinary notions of luxury – and it's what makes the Eichi II such an unusually satisfying watch.